10 Tips to Make a Successful PowerPoint Presentation

What defines a successful PowerPoint presentation? We find ourselves in the midst of a shift. An older tradition of digital presentations finally is being replaced by a newer one, where the images showed both hold a higher class. Purely in design terms and where they are now used professionally: as extra support for what is told and not as a cheat sheet to the lecturer.

We all remember the teachers in school who showed slides that were packed with text. Also, they stood there and read precisely what stood in the pictures – words for words.

In this article, I will give you 10 tips to make a successful PowerPoint presentation. In conclusion, to make a successful PowerPoint presentation, you need to take a consider the following topics:

1 Download a neat template.

2 Get inspiration from others.

3 Do not use too many slides.

4 Make sure your images are good.

5 Do not fill the presentation with words.

6 Do not use any effects.

7 Use a clean, simple, and stylish design.

8 Don’t use corporate or organizational logos unnecessarily.

9 Use only high-resolution images.

10 Make sure you have the right to use the images you present.

So, let’s talk about…

Introduction

As in the case of all other developments and trends, not all people are at the same point at the same time. Therefore, there are still people who treat PowerPoint slides as a pure cheat sheet, like the teachers I described above.

Also, there is currently a rather dispersed picture of what an acceptable PowerPoint presentation means. Clearly, a large part of the PowerPoints that are shown at conferences, corporate presentations, and working meetings are not good enough.

Furthermore, a bad PowerPoint deck will obviously make the presentation worse. The audience’s focus moves from the speaker and the message to the screen – and there, it’s very easy to get stuck in endless lines of bullet points or lots of fuzzy nonsense text.

Challenges creating a successful PowerPoint presentation

So, one of the problems with presentations is that we do not yet really have a consensus around that it is an art in itself to make an excellent presentation in Powerpoint or Keynote (if you prefer Apple’s own software). But that’s it, of course. In the same way that knowledge is required to make a Web page, a printed matter or a book cover, it requires knowledge to make a neat, good, functional and experiential PowerPoint presentation. This is where it often collide.

We all remember that lecturer…

The lecturer – especially if he or she usually moves within a more forgiving system with lower procedural requirements, such as college or university – sometimes has difficulty understanding what the problem is. “Nobody has complained before, and I have been holding hundreds of lectures” is a typical comment.

But the problem is that the world is changing and that lecturers from now on will meet an audience that simply has higher demands. If you want to be taken seriously, it is, therefore, crucial that you continuously work on how the presentations look like.

Here are 10 tangible tips on how to make a successful PowerPoint Presentation. Enjoy!

1 Download a neat template.

There are both free and paid variants of stylish templates that make your presentation look elegant and professional. This is an “easy” hack to make a successful presentation. For example, search Google for “Professional PowerPoint Templates” and you’ll get millions of results. Do you work at a large company that holds a lot of lectures? Then there is the chance that you already have templates.

successful powerpoint presentation

It may be that you must use these in all external communications. This is very common, especially since all companies want to communicate a unified image of the company. If you are unsure, I think you should contact your marketing department and ask for templates.

2 get inspiration from others.

SlideShare is a great place to start looking for inspiration. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent on Slideshare. Here are hundreds of thousands of slides and presentations covering all possible areas. Taking inspiration from others will help you in your mission to create a successful PowerPoint presentation.

Pro Tip: Search for inspiration on slideshare by searching for the topic you are going to deal with in your presentation. You will get hundreds of search results. Why reinvent the wheel? Save a lot of time by getting inspiration from others.

3 Do not use too many slides.

Don’t build your presentation on one image per thing you say, instead of a few well-chosen images. Nobody wants to see a lecturer who is stressing through a dozen pictures towards the end of the presentation just because the time is out. Think about which images really add something. Maybe you don’t need so many. Perhaps you can delete some of the slides to make your presentation more successful.

Pro Tip: Ask yourself questions when building your  PowerPoint presentation. Does this picture add something? What is the message of this slide? Is it clear which is the main message? Will I be able to answer questions about the content? 

4 Make sure your images are good.

You will show them on a large screen, maybe even on a big stage? In fact, you will never display larger images for anyone than during your presentation. Make sure that the image’s qualities match this. If you have no good pictures,  There are plenty of web pages with free materials that you can use.

successful powerpoint presentation pexels

Pro Tip: These are my top 3 resources where you can download free pictures and videos that you can use in your presentations.
1. Pexels.com
2. Unsplash.com
3. Shutterstock.com

5 Do not fill the presentation with words.

Optimum is as little as three, four clauses. Long sentences, quotes, and references are rarely needed. The audience wants to listen to you – not reading from a screen.  My advice is always that you write the lecture first and then make your presentation in support of the written.

Be careful not to do the other way around: Type the lecture in Powerpoint and then have your talk to support the images. Avoid the same reasons bullet points and enumerations altogether. Here there is a complete consensus among the audience, we promise to say: All evaluations we make object negatively to speakers with bullet points excesses.

Pro Tip: Write your lecture, pitch, or presentation first and then make your PowerPoint to support what you just wrote. Be careful not to do the other way around: Write the lecture in PowerPoint and then have your talk to support the pictures

6 Do not use any effects.

Most things like swooshes, spinning, flying in, or animated in the transitions between your pictures will be perceived as unprofessional and a little childish. One exception is if you have a  bullet point list. Then it might be a good idea to develop a bullet at a time.

successful powerpoint presentation pexels fly in

7 Use a clean, simple, and stylish design.

Do not switch between a variety of fonts and several different sizes. If you don’t have the knowledge to create a nicely designed presentation, this is the step where you can still succeed by choosing simplicity, purity and small-scale. Uniform colors work the same way very well. Also, think about what your fonts and what the color of the text really signals.

Pro Tip: A black and white  PowerPoint presentation is always better than a presentation with poorly-composed colors. If you don’t have the knowledge to create a nicely designed presentation, you can still succeed by choosing simplicity, purity and small-scale.

8 Don’t use corporate or organizational logos unnecessarily.

Many speakers represent an organization or company. This does not mean that these logos must be on all images. On the contrary, it is bad advertising for the company because the presentation will look inadequate and overloaded. Do you have to include a logo? Why not put it last along with your contact information?

9 Use only high-resolution images.

If you pull up a too-small picture in size, it becomes pixely – which pulls down the impression considerably. You cannot find the same image in a more high-resolution format; Do not use it. Try to find a similar image with a higher resolution.

pixely image

Pro Tip: You know that you can choose the size of images when searching on Google? Keep in mind, however, that images may be protected by copyright and that you must specify the source.

10 Make sure you have the right to use the images you present.

You can (of course) not just pick images from the Internet – instead use images that are free to use, from, for example, Pexels.com  – and be sure to refer to the author and the license if necessary.

successful powerpoint presentation pexels fly in pixely legal

Final Words

Keep in mind that projectors display the presentations in a specific image format. Find out which before you make your presentation. Nowadays it is common with an extracted widescreen format, also called 16:9, but older projectors show in a more square format. Here, your images can either be risked to be cut, if you are using Widescreen in a square projector, or you can get a black border around the images if it’s the opposite.

Conclusion

Today I have presented 10 points that will help you create a successful PowerPoint presentation. It’s not as hard as you might think. Use common sense and realize your own limitations. If you’re new to PowerPoint, you can’t expect to make super-professional presentations. You can, however, create a professional  PowerPoint presentation by Keep it clean and straightforward.

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Check out my Youtube channel, where I upload  PowerPoint Tutorials for beginners. One of my most appreciated  tutorials  is this one: